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Search everywhere The Win 8.1 Search tool is no longer just about scanning your own system. It's now integrated with Bing, delivering web results & (at times) even Wiki-style summaries of you're searching for. To give this a try, launch the Charms bar, click Search, type 'Marilyn Monroe' & press Enter. As well as seeing any matches in your own .doc, images or videos, you'll get a image, brief bio (birth date, husbands, siblings, date & place of death), & links to films, videos, albums & more. That's just the start, though. Swipe left (or spin the mouse wheel) & you'll find more images & summaries for all the top 'Marilyn' search engine hits: IMDB, Wiki, MarilynMonroe.com & Biography.com, as well as further links for images, videos, related searches & more. Click any of these to open a browser window at that site. This extra search power can be useful, but if you'd like to keep desktop searches to your own system then it's easily disabled. Launch the Charms bar, click Settings > Change PC Settings > Search, & set 'Use Bing to search web' to 'Off'. 22. Install anything Most mobile platforms recommend you only install apps from approved sources to protect your security, & Win 8 is the same: it'll only allow you to install trusted (that is, digitally signed) apps from the Win store. If this proves a problem, though, & you're willing to take the security bet (cos this isn't something to try unless you're entirely sure it's safe), then the system can be config to run trusted apps from any source. It's all done via a single Registry key, too. Just launch REGEDIT & set the value of the HKEY_LOCAL_DEVICE\App\Defaults\Pc\Win\Appx\AllowAllTrustedApps key to 1. 23. Pin app contents to the Start screen It's easy to pin apps to the Start screen (right-click, select "Pin"), but you don't have to stop there. Many apps enable you to pin specific content for easy access later. If you want more ideas for your upcoming holiday in Rome, for instance, you could open the Travel app, right-click, select "Destinations" & choose the "Rome" tile. & then repeat those steps every single time you revisit the page. Or, alternatively, right-click your liked Destination tile, select "Pin...", & you'll be able to access it directly from the Start screen. Similarly, if you use the Mail app with multiple accounts then just open these, & you can right-click to select discrete live tiles for each 1 - much more useful. 24. Log in auto WARNING: Your account will lose admin privileges as a result of this step even if you remove the lock screen, you'll still be forced to manually log in every time your system starts. This can be resolved at speed, though, using much the same method() as in previous versions of Win. Hold down the Win key, press R, type 'netplwiz' & press Enter to launch the User Accounts dialog. Clear the "Users need enter a user name & password to use this computer" box & click OK. Enter the user name & password of the account that you'd like to be logged in auto, click OK, restart your system & this time it should boot directly to the Start screen. 25. Use six apps at once Launch a Win 8 app & it appears full-screen, which is fine on a small tablet but not so impressive when you've got a 27-inch widescreen monitor to fill. Toolbox for Win 8 helps out, though, by bundling 12 common apps in a single package. You get a Fb client, browser, calculator, weather app, clock & more. & of always appearing full-screen, you can run & interact with 2, 3, four, even six of these tools, all at the same time. 26. Replace the Start menu If Win 8's search & navigation tools still leave you pining for the regular Start menu, installing the free Classic Shell will replace it with something similar. Install it & you get the standard menu of your installed apps, for instance, along with Search & Run boxes, the Recent Items menu, & Win 7-type shutdown options. & it can make Win 8 boot directly to the desktop, too. Classic Shell doesn't entirely ignore the modern UI world, though. A menu of installed apps enables you to launch them from the desktop, & you can alternatively switch to the Start screen with a click. 27. Learn Win key shortcuts *Win : switch between the Start screen & the last-running Win 8 app *Win + C : displays the Charms: the Settings, Devices, Share & Search options *Win + D : launches the desktop *Win + E : launches Explorer *Win + F : opens the File Search pane *Win + H : opens the Share pane *Win + I : opens Settings *Win + K : opens the Devices pane *Win + L : locks your PC *Win + M : minimises the current Explorer or Web Explorer window (works in the full-screen IE, too) *Win + O : toggles device orientation lock on & off *Win + P : switch your display to a second display or projector *Win + Q : open the App Search pane *Win + R : opens the Run box *Win + U : open the Ease of Access Centre *Win + V : cycle through toasts (updates) *Win + W : search your system settings (type POWER for links to all power-related options, say) *Win + X : displays a text menu of useful Win tools & applets *Win + Z : displays the right-click context menu when in a full-screen app *Win + + : launch Magnifier & zoom in *Win + - : zoom out *Win + , : Aero peek at the desktop *Win + Enter : launch Narrator *Win + PgUp : move the current screen to the left-hand monitor *Win + PgDn : move the current screen to the right-hand monitor *Win + PrtSc : capture the current screen & save it to your Images folder *Win + Tab : switch between running apps 28. Boot desktop apps faster While you can still set up desktop apps to load when Win 8 starts, they don't have the priority they once did. Quite the opposite, - Win 8 delays their launch to ensure everything else starts more quickly. This can make the system more responsive as your system boots, but if you're switching straight to the desktop then it may slow you down, so it may be worth turning off the delay, just to see if you can spot any improvement. Launch REGEDIT & browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\App\Pc\Win\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Serialize. Make the Serialize key if it doesn't exist, & select it in the left-hand pane. Right-click in the right-hand pane, make a new DWORD value called StartupDelayInMSec, & leave it set at zero (or, if a value is already there, set it to zero). Restart & the desktop apps will now launch more quickly. Try 3 or four test boots to see if there's any improvement, & if not, burn the StartupDelayInMSec value to restore the default settings. 29. Launch apps fast What you need to knowWin Phone 8 If you're a fan of keyboard shortcuts & don't like the idea of scrolling through app tiles to find the app you need, don't worry, Win 8 still supports a useful old shortcut. Which is parfait1 if, say, you're looking to be able to shut down your PC with a click. Launch the desktop app, right-click an empty part of the desktop & click New > Shortcut. Browse to the app you'd like to launch here. Or for the sake of this example, enter shutdown.exe -s -t 00 to shut down your PC, or shutdown.exe -h -t 00 to hibernate it, & click Next. Type a shortcut name - 'Hibernate', say - & click Finish. Right-click the shortcut, select Pin to Start & it should appear on the far right of the Start screen - just drag the tile wherever you like. 30. Take intelligent screengrabs If a Win 8 app is showing something interesting & you'd like to record it for posterity, then hold down the Win key, press PrtSc, & the image won't just go to the clipboard: it'll be auto saved to your My Images folder with the name Screenshot.png (& then Screenshot(1).png, Screenshot(2).png & so on). You may hope that pressing Win+Alt+PrtSc would similarly save an image of the active window, but no, sadly not. Mb next time. 31. Default to Photo Viewer Double-click an image file within Explorer & it won't open in a Photo Viewer window any more, at least not by default. you'll be switched to the full-screen Win 8 Photos app - bad news if you thought you'd escaped such hassles by using the desktop. If you'd like to fix this, go to Mono Panel > Apps > Default Apps & select Set your default apps. Scroll down & click Win Photo Viewer in the Apps list. , click 'Set this app as default' if you'd like the Viewer to open all the file types it can handle, or select the 'Choose default' options if you like to specify which file types it should open. Click OK when you're done.